Who Wants to Run the Country? – Realty Show!

Realty shows. That seems to be all that’s on TV these days. Every time I think I’ve seen the last new idea for one, another is advertised – some sillier than the previous one.

I’m not saying I haven’t gotten hooked on a couple. I missed the first season of Dancing with the Stars, but got so hooked when I did start watching – in the middle of the second season – that I was calling in to cast my votes for my favorites and then was almost jumping out of my chair when my choice won. By the 3rd and 4th, I was even worse.

I watched The Surreal Life and Big Brother for a couple of episodes each, but I tried to not land on any channel featuring a realty show – even for a second – knowing how addictive they can be. Okay, I have a confession, I did watch Torie and Dean Inn Love last night. Corny, and I surely wouldn’t want cameras following me around constantly, but I was entertained. I’m sure these people don’t really act like they do on the show — in real life?

I started thinking about what could be left in the reality world. I came up with a few.

Kid Nation has been taken. I haven’t seen it, and without facts, I have to say that one sounds very scary. Perhaps it’s been built up much more than it should be.

I came up with another one that might be fun – “Who wants to run the country?”

The way it works:

there are two sides. We’ll call one the Blues and we’ll call the other the Reds. On the Blue side we start off with a huge number of contestants. To make it more entertaining, we include a female contestant, a black contestant and we have a “richer than most” contestant who enters the contest by getting points against him because of his $400 haircut.

The contestants line up and … well, we could have them debate and just watch them pick each other apart while they brag about themselves and everything wonderful they’ve done. In between the debating and boasting and nit-picking, we send them out to various states to meet the … let’s call them ‘citizens’ who will decide which contestant they prefer.

The Blue’s all try to get each other eliminated so they can win for the Blue side. And – the Reds do the same thing. Similar strength trials, debates, and touring the states are also happening with the Red team. Perhaps a Mormon, a former POW and a divorced guy could be interesting Reds contestants. It would make it more colorful. In the rules it also says that contestants would be allowed to join in even after the game has begun. Perhaps having an actor join the Red team would make it more fun and tilt the boards a bit.

Everyone gets in on this – the networks and cable news programs could have discussion groups trying to pick each contestant apart so they’ll get eliminated. They could have contestants create ads that they pay for and that would make the networks and cables some big money to keep them interested.

Contestants could be lied about, everything from their pasts brought out to seem as though it were important, and mudslinging could earn points or it could eliminate the contestant from the show. After the citizens have declared a winner for the Red side and one for the Blues, then each of the victors would be able to choose a contestant either from those who they ripped apart in the first part of the game or a new contestant. Then there would be another season of pulling out all punches for the citizens to find a winner from the two final contestants and their buddies. The theme for this part would be “anything goes”. It could be as dirty as possible, the contestants can use their own money and also get donations to try to convince the citizens that they should be the final choice.

Drugs, having gay children, jail terms, religion, employees, racist remarks, criminal activity, childhood activities, ex-lovers, fraudulent business schemes, family and friends – no subject is off limits.

This show could run for several seasons. And if one side seems to be falling behind or some horrible fact is found about a contestant – no matter what – the other side could be blamed for all of it and points could be taken away.

This is great. I’ll have to figure out some catchy name for it and also a great catch phrase – something that will resonate as well as Trump’s “You’re Fired” or Paris’ “That’s Hot”. And then I’ll have to figure out how all the points can be counted without any problems … That might be the hard part.